... . The confidential annex to the Report of the Intelligence Services Commissioner also contains details of the number of warrants and authorisations issued. The Commissioner offered the lame excuse that disclosure 'would, I believe, assist the operation of those hostile to the state if they were able to estimate even approximately the extent of the work of the Security Service, SIS and GCHQ in fulfilling their functions.' What utter rubbish! You can just envisage Osamah Bin Laden sitting there saying, 'Wow the number of warrants have gone up.' No: the purpose is to hide from the public the extent to which surveillance takes place. Unfortunately it is the view of some legal commentators that having regard ...

... the demands of its own population. Getting Inside Political Warfare Techniques The third area for investigation – having explored the security systems' engagement in the increase of state power (especially through 'homeland security' networks) and their role in capturing the international institutional system in order to effect state policy (which is more the territory of, say, SIS) – is to investigate the application of 'technique' to subversion and regime change on a global scale. Investigators are missing a trick – we do not need to get conspiratorial. Our investigation can take place by observing, questioning and interpreting events taking place on broadcast, in the web and in the print media every day simply by ...

... (c) www.lobster-magazine.co.uk (Issue 48) Winter 2004 Last| Contents| Next Issue 48 After Iraq: some FCO/SIS issues Corinne Souza When falsehoods are bared, we have to be alert to those that will take their place as well as the ones that remain concealed.(1) At the time of writing (October 2004), the deluge of media coverage on the false justifications for the Iraq war – now understandably giving way to greater anxieties about the well-being of British troops – has led to widespread public recognition of intelligence failure, without balanced apportionment of blame. This has served to obfuscate one of the real problems: over the years 'intelligence' has ...

... heard of Dave Spart? RR: You keep trying to patronise me and it always misses. The reference to Dave Spart simply tells me you have never read Lobster. Secret servants Red faces at NATO where the official NATO Website carried for two months an English translation of an article, which had originally appeared in Croatia, which identified four SIS officers. (1) This was the comic climax of a series of stories about SIS's activities in the states of the former Yugoslavia.(2) The exposure of SIS's officers and operations there began in February, with the identification in the Serbian media of Anthony Monckton, a senior SIS officer, who, with two others, ...

... capacities. But to use this new 'source's' intelligence in this way, the expert in the field, Dr Brian Jones, of the Defence Intelligence Staff, was simply not told about the source or his 'intelligence'. As Lord Butler commented dryly in his report: 'It would have been more appropriate for senior managers in the DIS and SIS [MI6] to have made arrangements for the intelligence to be shown to DIS experts rather than making their own judgements on its significance'. (7) By keeping Jones out of the loop the senior MI6 and DIS people showed that they knew the intelligence was bogus. Here, if you will, is the moment of conspiracy ...

... MI6 by Steve Dorril, in the first batch of what eventually became the Who's Who of the British Secret State. Though I cannot remember why Dorril thought this and though there is nothing specific in Ashdown's known career which says 'intelligence', the career move from Special Boat Squadron to Foreign Office is pretty obvious.(1) The alleged SIS affiliation seems to have stuck, however. The doyen of British political profile writers, Andrew Roth, wrote in the Guardian (19 March 2001), sixteen years after Dorril, that Ashdown 'is popularly supposed to have been serving with MI6 in Geneva under the cover of being the first secretary to the UK mission to the UN. ...

... some real political insight into what happened. This isn't it. Instead, it's a wide-ranging reappraisal of the intelligence communities in the post-9/11 world. The book wrestles with these key questions: how is it that the super-rationalist West, with all of the massive resources of the CIA, TIARA (Tactical Intelligence and Related Activities) and SIS, were completely unable to stop a few guys with Stanley knives flying jet planes into the World Trade Centre? How have the security and intelligence forces managed to repackage themselves in the 'new world' of post-Cold War era of globalisation and cultural-religious conflict? And who is benefiting from this hyper-technological world, those struggling to overturn or to impose ...

... The 52 was highlighted in the Sunday Telegraph (2 May 2004). In the same issue, Britain's former US ambassador Lord Renwick made an atlanticist's rebuttal. His financial interests – I assume he has some – were not disclosed. My criticisms of The 52, and accepting the deep anguish of the many, including courageous work by individual SIS officers, concern, firstly, the poor PR: the letter offered no 'hook' to enable parts of the US media to run with it more favourably, in order to dovetail with the different agenda/focus of the American version, strengthening the impact of both. Nor did it have any 'characterisation' (dumbing down) which ...

... intelligence failure in Iraq. Britain's Iraq Intelligence Product See note (17) Oneway to evaluate Britain's Iraq intelligence product is to read SIS's 'Briefing Note' to the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) which was published in September 2003.(18) Under the heading 'The Iraqi in the Street', and sticking to all outdated stereotypes, SIS writes, 'Are you a member of one of Saddam's favourite tribes? Yes? Then join the Ba'th Party.' (19) Actually, under Saddam Hussein (February 2003), 'the Iraqi in the Street' was just as likely to have been, say, a war widow, her plight worsened by sanctions, or a ...